You might think that finding the right backpack is a simple affair. But you’d be wrong.

When last I needed a mid-sized pack — mostly for international travel and the occasional weekend trip — I started online. I narrowed it down to a couple models. It took visits to two stores to try on these packs — to feel their heftiness, to see their real (not as-seen-on-a-computer-screen) colors, to imagine them carrying weight, to unzip the zippers and see what completely unnecessary pockets hide beneath the burly facade. It worked, and eventually I found the right mid-sized back.

But somehow when I was looking at the Topo Designs site — which features an assortment of packs, all made in a LEED-certified shop here in Colorado — I knew that their mini mountain bag would be a good fit for an everyday bag.

Late for what? Turns out she was referring to an email she’d just sent regarding her Cairo-bound flight arriving late at night. Wait — my 75-year-old mom is meeting me in Cairo this fall? Even after she’s tried to talk me out of this trip for the last three years? Sweet!

The book explores parenthood, energy conservation, religion and how to make a cross-country bike trip happen.

Anyone with a teenager can identify at some point with author Matt Biers-Ariel in his book “The Bar Mitzvah and The Beast” when he decides that the best way to connect with his son Yonah – who spends much of his time with earbuds firmly implanted like the ends of an umbilical cord to his iPod – is through a cross-country bike trip from California to Washington, D.C., an incredibly demanding physical feat that will force all the family members to just deal with each other.

Yonah’s bar mitzvah looms, but he refuses to go through with it. Biers-Ariel is stumped as to what might replicate a rite of passage, and decides that his own dream of biking across the country will suffice. Needless to say, this is not Yonah’s dream. Nor is it very interesting to Yonah’s younger brother, Solomon, or Matt’s wife, Djina. But they all gamely decide to go along, and choose energy conservation as a cause, for which they collect signatures along the way.

Deserts are a favorite for trail runners, and this five-mile series of loops on the Utah side of Dinosaur National Monument is strikingly excellent

I don’t run on roads. They wreck your legs, your hips. Roads are for wheeled things. But I’m crazy for running on trails. Tons of trails thread the Front Range – rocky and rutted trails, straight up and screaming down trails, wildflower-surrounded trails and pine-perfumed tails. And I dig all of ‘em. We’re lucky.

But I probably prefer desert trail running to anything else, with this stipulation: Not when it is 100 degrees outside. In particular, I adore the trails of eastern Utah, the trails of soft red dirt or packed sand, the trails that dive into canyons and follow washes and climb atop mesas. I find the juxtaposition of red rocks and ground, sagebrush, juniper, cacti, blue sky, and white clouds awfully stirring. I like the sounds – the lizards scurrying across and under leaves beside vegetation-lush canyon trails, the wind, the ravens caw-cawing and even the whush sound their wings make when they come close. I like the silence, too.

Beauty all around. Stillwater Canyon on the Green River, Canyonlands National Park.

There are lots of cool and interesting things to see and do while kayaking the Green River through Utah’s Labyrinth and Stillwater Canyons.

Dozens of Anasazi ruins — including the two-story lookout tower at Ft. Bottom — are tucked away among the cliffs. There are petroglyph panels decorated with horned gods and mysterious messages. There’s Register Rock, the Bowknot Bend “post office” and the outlaw cabin supposedly used by Butch and Sundance in their horse thieving days. Numerous side canyons offer hikes into the secret delights of places like Upheaval Dome and the surreal landscapes of The Doll’s House and the Maze in Canyonlands National Park.

Initially our plan for a kayaking trip down the Green exuded mellowness. Tom Brown and I would launch at Ruby Ranch north of Moab and leisurely paddle and drift for five days and one hundred miles to Spanish Bottom below the Green and Colorado River’s confluence. Along the way we’d see the canyon sights, do some hikes, lay around like lizards on the beaches, grow fat on all the food we’d brought and become so carefree, lazy and indolent, we’d forget our names. With so much contemplative time all the mysteries of life would be solved.

Instead we ended up paddling through the canyons as if pursued by howling horned gods.

A highlight of the Pine Valley Open Space Park is a walk along the North Fork of the South Platte River.

Don’t blink or you’ll miss it, but what the tiny town of Pine Grove lacks in size, it makes up for in charm.

Three years ago Pine Grove successfully petitioned to return Pine — which it had been called since sometime before 1920 — to the name it was given when it came to be in 1886, but either way, it’s an apt moniker, because the surrounding forests make a trip to this area southwest of Denver a visual delight.

The Pine Emporium (16714 County Road 126, 303-838-5150) is part antiques shop, part art gallery, part thrift store and all fun, one of those places where it’s easy to find that four hours have passed when you thought you’d been poking around for 15 minutes in the dishes, locally made pottery, vintage linens, knick knacks, jewelry, clothes, furniture, books…the list goes on and on.

It might be the only restaurant in the Land of Enchantment with a parrot aviary in the lobby. (Yes, the cage is far away from the dining area, kitchen and waiter paths.)

The place is kind of gaudy, kind of kitschy and all kinds of good. One fine way to go is the stacked enchilada plate, pictured, with red and green chile. (For folks from Out East, you ask for “Christmas.”) New Mexican enchiladas come in two versions, stacked and rolled. I asked for the carne adovada on mine, tender morsels of roasted pork marinated in red chile sauce. Yum.

If you go, La Posta is at 2410 Calle de San Albino in Mesilla, which abuts Las Cruces. 575-524-3524.

When photographer Judy Walgren moved to Colorado from Texas some years ago she asked me, generally, what did I carry in my car? So I gave her a list. The List. She was stunned: “Really Dean?” She asked somewhat taken aback.

Ummmm, well… yeah. Really.

What’s in my car at any given time depends on the season and whatever particular outdoor thing I’m involved in or think I might be involved in. You never know when your boss might just say, “Hey, you’re doing such a great job why don’t you take the rest of the day off and do something fun!” That’s never happened, but it could — even though I wasn’t a Boy Scout I’d hate to be unprepared.

Part of carrying so much stuff is the preparedness thing. Tooling around in the back country means you could find yourself in any number of iffy situations: off the road in an icy ditch, stranded or stuck in a snowstorm or as once happened in Idaho, trying to change a flat tire with really stubborn lug nuts at night while trying to fend off rattlesnakes. Well okay, only two rattlesnakes and they seemed to be merely passing through.

At the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek‘s 8100 Mountainside Bar & Grill, Christian Apetz is welcoming and charming, and the fact that he takes the time to come out and chat with the guests makes what could be just another meal in a ski area hotel — a 60-second walk to the first lift, and also a great place to stay if you’re headed here in the summer to mountain bike — into a welcoming and charming experience.

Of course, the fact that Apetz’s menu is packed with dishes that you actually want to eat keeps it from being ho-hum resort fare, as well. I love me some French food, but the last regime was a little, shall we say, tightly wound. The food was pricey, sure, but you also had to choose carefully or wind up with something overwrought and cranky. It made the staff uptight, too, as though they were always waiting for something to go wrong.

Travel and Fitness Editor Kyle Wagner grew up in Pittsburgh and lived in Lake County, Ill., and Naples, Fla., before moving to Denver in 1993, where she reviewed restaurants for Westword before moving to The Denver Post in 2002. She considers the best days to be those that involve her teenage daughters and doing something outside, preferably mountain biking or whitewater rafting.

The pursuit of a healthier state through better living. The Denver Post's ColoradoFit blog features local experts on the latest fitness trends, active lifestyles and nutrition options in Colorado and beyond.